Is it ethical to use AI?

I am a contrarian who likes to argue and complain a lot. Because of this, I have never been inclined to block people who argue with me or complain about my work, or even lash out at me with some hostility. I could say a lot of noble sounding things about how I value debate and open discourse, and those things would be true, but I also just feel like I should tolerate other people as much as they have to tolerate me.

I recently wrote a piece about AI enthusiasts vs AI skeptics — a very mild piece, I might add, almost repulsively brimming over with both-sides-are-good-people’s and can’t-we-all-just-get-along’s. Yet I have blocked more people in the past three weeks than the past ten years. 1 There is a fear in the water right now that is bringing the crazy out in all of us.

The stakes are not low. The world is burning, after all. CEOs go on job-murdering sprees and the Industrial Revolution may be coming for knowledge workers. Even the Pope is alarmed.

AI is not special

It bothers me when I see people holding AI up like it’s something special — uniquely evil, incomparably harmful, irreparably tainted. It is none of those things. AI is just technology.

Some technologies are more damaging than others — knives are less damaging than guns, Facebook for colleges was less damaging than Facebook for Myanmar — but we always discover risks before we know how to govern them. 2 There is always a gap while we try to catch up.

That gap is not proof that AI is evil. It is proof that we have work to do.

The fact that we have not solved the problems yet is not an argument to disconnect. It is an argument to engage, especially if you work in technology and already have an arsenal of relevant skills.

You do not learn to govern a tool by refusing to touch it. You learn by using it and understanding well enough to critique it, shape it, contribute to it, and set boundaries around it. You learn how to make it borin g.

“ Learn AI so you can complain about AI better.” I said it an…